John Kyrle High School students and staff were honoured and humbled to welcome Werner Reich from New York on Wednesday afternoon.

Werner, now in his 90th year is one of a very small number of people remaining who experienced the horror of Auschwitz during World War Two. He gave two presentations during the afternoon; one to 240 enrapt Year 9 students and one to a large group of Sixth Form History and Religious Studies students. Werner shared his life story which took him from Germany to Yugoslavia and Austria with time also spent in the UK before, around 12 years after being liberated, he married and emigrated to the USA.

He witnessed many horrors during his captivity, encountering the infamous ‘Angel of Death’ (Josef Mengele) and surviving a death march in temperatures well below freezing. Werner also touched on his wife Eva’s story; her life had been spared by the actions of Nicholas Winton, a British man who had saved the lives of nearly 700 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia just prior to the outbreak of WW2.

Werner challenged John Kyrle students to consider what kind of people they wanted to be. He described the victims, bullies, just people and bystanders of WW2; he referred to bystanders as the “good people who did nothing” and gave contemporary examples. He shared a simple acronym based on the word ‘just’ as a prompt for humanity: J – judge the situation; U – understand the problem; S – solve; T – take action. Students and staff agreed that Werner’s talk was incredibly powerful and inspiring; one sixth form student said, “the promise we made to not be one of the good people that do nothing showed me very vividly the difference that even one person’s actions can make to improve or change a life.”

Head of RE Nick Wardale thanked Werner for sharing his story with JKHS students stating, “It is my hope that our students will remember what they have learnt from Werner today and share it with their own children and grandchildren. I am certain Werner’s words will have had a profound effect.”

Headteacher, Nigel Griffiths, echoed Mr Wardle’s thanks to Werner. Mr Griffiths said this talk was inspirational and enhanced several aspects of the school’s wider curriculum. These included emphasising fundamental British values and learning which has a social, moral, spiritual and cultural focus.